Mecca boss optimistic despite challenges caused by high energy costs

The group, which owns Mecca Bingo, with sites in Black Country, and Grosvenor casino at Walsall, reported a pre-tax profit of £73 million to a £123 million loss during its last financial year.

That was despite a rise in revenues, up six per cent – £681.9 million compared with £644 million in 2021-22.

John O'Reilly, Chief Executive of The Rank Group, said the business was now seeing a rise in the number of customers and is hopeful of 'delivering good levels of revenue and profit growth'.

"The return of customers to our Grosvenor and Mecca venues continues to pick up and our second half numbers give cause for optimism after a very challenging couple of years," he said.

"During that time, our UK venues have faced a surge in energy costs, high wage inflation, a tightening in the regulatory environment and the more general pressures on the consumer's discretionary expenditure.

"However, energy costs have stabilised, inflation appears to now be easing, customers continue to slowly return to both our Grosvenor and our Mecca venues and we now expect to deliver good levels of revenue and profit growth.

"Our Digital business is performing strongly, and we have a strong pipeline of customer facing developments in both our UK and Spanish brands to drive revenue and profit growth.

"We are very focused on delivering a market leading cross-channel experience for our Grosvenor and Mecca customers with several key developments landing during this new financial year.

"The UK Government's white paper on gambling reform sets out a number of important public policies which will enable the land-based bingo and casino sectors to modernise the customer proposition to better meet the needs of today's consumers.

"The delivery of the secondary legislation to enable these reforms cannot come soon enough and we are well advanced with plans to maximise these opportunities.

I am hugely grateful to my colleagues across the Group who continue to excite, entertain and protect their customers, provide support to their local communities and contribute fully to the progress we are making in the transformation of Rank."